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FAQ
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How do you ship?
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We ship Priority Mail (US Postal Service).
Even though the minimum (1 pound) rate for Priority mail is
$4.60 , we share the burden of shipping with you and you only pay $2.95, regardless the number of coffees or the (domestic) destination.
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What are your shipping charges?
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- a flat fee for Shipping and Handling of
$2.50 applies to all regular orders and Coffee/Flavor-of-the-month club subscriptions (regardless of the number of coffees in the order).
So if you order a 3-coffee shipment, your shipping charges per coffee will only be 97 cents.
- prices of the package-subscriptions include all shipping and handling fees.
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When can I expect my coffee?
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The postal Service claims one to three days for Priority Mail, depending on the destination zip code.
This is our real-life experience:
- South Florida (zip-codes starting 330, 331, 333, 334) can usually expect overnight delivery.
- large metropolitan areas with a direct flight connection to Fort Lauderdale will typically take two days;
- more rural areas three or four days; but our experience is that, on occasion, it can take up to five days.
How about shipping around the holidays?
Add two to three days to the usual shipping times, regardless what you hear from the newspapers. We have done this several years, and have never seen three day deliveries around the holidays...
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Can I track my shipment?
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Priority mail does not allow for tracking. Order tracking is only available with Express Mail and similar services, all at rates around $16 per shipment - more than the price of the coffees and clearly uneconomical for the kind of shipments we do.
- Do you ever loose coffees in the mail? We do have an occasional "lost in nowhere" shipment (although they are usually addressed incorrectly and still show up, but via a very round-about route). At a yearly rate of 10,000+ shipments this occurs some 3-5 times, so the chances that your coffee does not arrive is almost negligible!
We realize, however, that if this ever happens, "being one of only 3-5" is of little or no consolation so do contact us if you suspect something is wrong with your shipment.
- How do I know when my coffee is shipped?
Once a coffee is actually scheduled for roasting we Email you a shipping confirmation with the day that we will ship your coffee. We usually confirm shipments the day of, or after, you placed your order. Regular orders ship within 24 hours, but deferred shipments of (gift)subscriptions may have shipping dates confirmed that may be days or weeks away; this shipping date is firm, however. If for any unforeseen reason we have to reschedule your order you will receive an Emailed confirmation of that change prior to the change. It is therefore pertinent that we have a "useful" Email address on file with your order...
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What is the package size of your coffee?
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The package for a single coffee weighs exactly one pound (16oz), but the net weight of the coffee is 15 oz.
That allows us to give you that great deal on shipping: $2.50 for even a single coffee! (see also next question)
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Why is your package 15 oz in stead of 16 oz?
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The decision to ship 15oz of coffee in stead of the usual 16oz felt a little funny to us at first: our business was always "by the pound". But there is a very good reason:
When we look at our web-coffees as a product that includes shipping, we can give you a much better value by staying just under the lb mark. Rates dramatically increase at the pound mark: shipments of 1 lb or less are charged a flat rate of $2.50 *, but go over that with just one ounce (for example 1 lb of beans + about 1 oz in packaging) and you suddenly pay up to $9.80 (priority mail rates as of May 2007). We speculated that, if we would charge you the full postage and tell you this story, you would tell us to ship just under the pound mark -- the best value for the money. Besides that: shipping that extra 1 oz of coffee while charging the prices we do makes the difference in making a profit or not; not really a choice...
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What packaging do you use?
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- On waste and packaging: we try to package with as little waste and weight as possible (1 oz for a single coffee), and use tear- and waterproof Tyvek outer envelopes (for info: Tyvek DuPont). The coffee is packaged in clear plastic coffee bags with a one-way valve to allow the fresh roasted coffees to out-gas during shipping.
- Why plastic bags? We started using our signature white paper coffee bags. But, especially in larger post offices, the packages were sometimes exposed to so much weight of surrounding parcels that the coffee bag inside the Tyvek envelope would break and the coffee spill. We then changed to our current clear plastic bag.
- Do you vacuum seal your bags?
Our coffees are actually not vacuum sealed, just sealed closed so the coffee does not spill. Fresh roasted coffee still "out-gasses" for about 3 weeks during which period vacuum sealing would not work, since the gasses (mainly CO2) generated by the coffee would make the bag "swell up" again. Those same gasses preserve the fresh taste of your coffee. So the only way we can ship you the freshly roasted coffee sealed is by using an exhaust valve (the one-way valve that you see right above the label) to allow the bag to "breathe out"
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How should I store my coffee?
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Always store your coffee in an airtight container:
- Whole bean: if you will finish your coffee within three weeks, do NOT store your coffee in the freezer -- it is simply not necessary, and will actually destroy some of the flavors of your coffee. Only if you are going to keep your coffees longer than three weeks is it worth this sacrifice. Even then: only freeze the amounts that you think will actually extend past those three weeks.
- Ground coffee: store no longer than a week to 10 days without freezing. The moment we grind your coffee we increase the surface area exposed to oxygen and humidity, the "staling agents", more than a thousand-fold. Vacuum storage (or freezing, for that matter) will only slow down the staling of your coffee, but will not stop it.
- Subscriptions: Since it is a little harder to maintain freshness of ground coffee, we offer the option of a subscription (a "standing order" shipment program) where we ship you coffee with a certain time interval. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any point.
- Can coffee be too fresh? Can there be something as coffee being "too fresh"? No, but...
The first days after roasting, coffee is still "out-gassing"; the smell is delicious, but it may cause your filter to seemingly "boil over", providing a less than perfect cup. Even though this out-gassing continuous for about 3 weeks, it is fine to use after about one day - exactly the time that the coffee spends in transit between us. You'll get it at its peak!!
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Product complaints & returns...
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We stand behind the quality of our product. If you are not happy with our product for any reason, we like to hear this as soon as possible. If warranted, we are happy to replace your product free of charge, or provide you with a credit. Since coffee is a food item, we cannot take returns other than for verification in case of a complaint. In the event you wish to cancel a prepaid package, an 8% processing fee will be applied to the unused balance of your purchase and deducted from your refund.
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